Three Floyds Alpha Klaus Christmas Porter

Bottle: Pours a dark brown with a large tanned head and thick lacing. Nose is a blend of coffee, cocoa, roasted malt, and hints of bitters. More hops than I expected, but it balanced well with the bittersweet cocoa taste, coffee, and roasted malt. A more distinctive taste for a porter than those of late. I guess that’s what the label promised and that’s what the brew delivered. Quite tasty.

Pours brown with an inescapable huge dark tan head. Smells of chocolate, roasted malt and caramel with some sugary hints. Tastes of chocolate, cherries, tangy malt and some pepper. Mouthfeel is full with a nice tangy finish. Very enjoyable.

A great tasting porter on draught! Beautiful black murky thick body. Excellent light brown head which is mostly lasting. Bitter-light flavour to start with, nice creamy lively roasted chocolate malt and then a good long finish with chocolate and that warm feeling from the alc. (hadn’t eaten before I tasted it).

Pours a dark black with a light brown head. Nice dark malts and chocolate mixed with hops. Blends really well together. Pretty big, bold taste up front. A lot of burnt coffee grounds and mocha caramel, followed by creamy chocolate. The hop taste is more in the background to give it an interesting twist. Finishes somewhat bitter with a big coffee aftertaste. Really pleasant.

On tap at Map Room, Chicago. Almost black with minimal head. Not as hoppy as I remember last year. Hint of roast in the aftertaste. Definitely one of the more flavorful and complex porters. A nice treat this time of year.

Bomber. Knowing FFF from their Black Sun Stout, I expected quite a bit of hops in this one. Well, I wasn’t disappointed...first I was welcomed by a large dose of pine and grapefruit. Fortunately, that wasn’t all, as chocolate and coffee tones came through afterward and dominated after opening. This Bad Santa poured dark black with huge billowing tan head. A beautiful sight for sure. The taste was slightly less than I was hoping for...the tastes of the roasted malts were a little subdued, though certainly there. The finish was a nice combination of bitter hops and coffee. I’ll have to go back to PA near Christmas to score another bottle of this.

22oz bomber. This was awesome! smells like fruit cake! very fruity aroma, and flavor, i’m getting sweet grapefruit, and other fruits, nice bittering in the finish, amazing stuff!

poured from 22 oz. bomber, the only way this beer is available as I understand it, into a rugged pint beer glass, on a windy April Fool’s Day (my 25th wedding anniversary), while wearing my black Guinness 1759 logo hat, slow smoking a slab of pork shoulder on the grill, and looking at Alpha Klaus’ menacing visage on the label wantonly dumping hops into his strange brew like they grew on trees or something. I got the last two bombers left on the shelf, or so the nice, helpful young lady at Keg Liquors in Clarksville, IN told me. No more ’til next yule. First impressions: Wow! What a dark brew. As an experiment, I held the glass up to a glowing light bulb, and you can’t see light through this stuff! The guys at Three Floyds did an excellent job on this recipe, delicious in every way, and I’ve rarely seen its like for head retention. The head rises in a column like soft serve ice cream and has a color like that taken on by the dollop of whipped cream on top of an espresso drink after it’s been floating on the coffee for a while. It leaves little gradations on the glass, marking each place where you took another quaff. It strikes me that I picked the wrong time of year to sample this beer. I wish I had had it two months ago, while sitting next to a roaring fire, wearing my thick baja hoodie and listening to Woody’s Roadhouse on WFPL FM Louisville on Saturday night, while everyone else in the house dozed dreamily in their beds. Whereas I have downed a pint of Alpha Klaus already (the 7 or so ounces left in the glass is still holding tenaciously onto the remaining trace of head, and I have consumed it pretty slowly), and the 7.5 % ABV has worked its magic on me, and as I am somewhat of a neophyte at this beer rating stuff, I’ll leave it to the other beer loving wordsmiths on this site to fine in the details for you. All I can say is Wow. Wow. WOW! This beer deserves whatever mystique has attached itself to it due to its seasonal nature and limited availability. It’s good, nay excellent, beer if you can get it. The very buzzable and fearsome Alpha Klaus will see you again, with his Santa Claus hat terminating in a hop flower where the puff of cotton is supposed to be, when frost is in the air late 2007! Cheers and happy quaffing ~ wheresbaldo